


A minor bathroom crisis

by Spayne



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: 3rd pov, F/F, you read that right
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:27:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26694481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spayne/pseuds/Spayne
Summary: Eve suffers a minor bathroom crisis a few hours after 308 and talks it through with a friend.
Relationships: Eve Polastri/Villanelle | Oksana Astankova
Comments: 79
Kudos: 222





	A minor bathroom crisis

**Author's Note:**

> Because who hasn’t had a minor post sex bathroom crisis?
> 
> (Hopefully everyone has and I’m not projecting my own drama onto the entire readership, my apologies if so.)

“You do remember that she killed me, right?”

Eve peeks out behind the fingers covering her eyes to see nothing, just the inside of the hotel room’s bathroom and her bare legs as she sits on the toilet. Its the same nothing that she always sees when this happens.

She exhales roughly.

“Yeah.”

She imagines a level stare giving way to gentle amusement.

“Just checking.”

—————

The bath water is cold.

Niko is gone.

The phone is ringing.

Eve rests her head on her knees.

“Something did happen though.” She imagines that he would say it kindly.

She doesn’t reply because there is no one there. There never is.

“I say this with the greatest of respect of course, but stabbing her wasn’t your most well thought through plan.”

Eve exhales roughly.

“Jesus, Bill, it’s not like I had a lot of options!”

His eyebrows would be raised at that.

“Oh come on, you did have options.”

“Right, and that’s what you wanted? You wanted me to just let her— I know even know.”

“I’m dead if I must remind you, so it doesn’t really matter what I want.”

He’d say with the smug exaggerated patience of someone with no skin in the game.

“And— you do know what else would have have happened.”

Eve misses Bill so much sometimes that she can dig her nails into the skin of her palm hard enough to draw blood and still feel nothing but his absence. Right now though? In this moment she hates him. Or hates his voice in her head. Whatever. It’s the only part she has left.

“Don’t be a dick, I did it for you.”

He’d look at her sadly, in the way of a parent to a child who refuses to understand.

“No Darling, no you didn’t.”

—————

It’s a thing she does. She supposes that it is her process. It’s a symptom of madness probably too. But regardless of what it is, it still happens.

Once it was getting a job interview and she’d talked it through with her Dad. Another time she’d almost kissed but instead stabbed her—whatever she is, and she’d spoken to Bill. These days it’s mostly Bill. Sometimes it’s about big life events and sometimes it’s little things. Mostly it’s about her, because what else is there in her consciousness anymore?

Some people write lists and some people talk things through with themselves internally. Eve has always tried not to be insulted that her subconscious is so openly mistrustful of her own judgment that she has to conjure others to provide some balance to the conversation.

“And you’re hiding naked in the bathroom because—?” He’d ask.

Eve sighs, her hands still covering her face.

“Because—“ She tails off.

“Are we just going to say ‘because’ at each other until she comes to check on you?” He’d ask with the same amusement from before.

Eve takes her hands away from her face.

“Oh shut up, I'm not hiding, it’s a good thing to pee after—“ She leaves the sentence hanging.

“Sex?” He’d stage whisper it.

“Yes. Fine. After sex. Whatever.”

“There was that so hard?”

Eve grins because despite the anxiety clawing away inside her stomach, its still nice to have a friend.

“Wanna hear about her tits now?”

—————

Eve sits on the bed and stares at her bulky reflection in the mirror. Seriously, could Hugo have chosen a thicker stab vest? No one on TV who wears one looks like this, it’s ridiculous.

“It’s not subtle.”

“I know, right? She’s never going to trust me if I open the door wearing this?” Eve responds glad for the support.

“I didn’t mean the vest.” Bill would tell her.

Eve sighs.

“Why is it you only turn up to torture me? Why not when I want some company to watch TV?”

“I don’t think that’s how spirit guides work.”

“Is that what you are? I thought you were my imaginary friend or something.” Eve sounds tired even to her own ears.

She pulls the straps down further below her shoulder, it’s no use she still looks like a linebacker. For fucks sake.

“I’m serious, what are you doing Eve? And don’t give me the no guts no glory tripe from earlier.”

She imagines his eyes, always far too perceptive, even now.

She stands up roughly.

“What? We need her. Jin is scared of her, we can use that.” Eve pulls at the vest again.

Bill is silent.

“We did that interrogation training course together remember? You can’t just not say anything and expect me to fill the silence with whatever it is you want me to say.”

“I told you before, Im dead—“

“—it doesn’t matter what you want. Yeah, yeah.” Eve interrupts him before exhaling roughly.

“Fine. Ok.”

He would be standing in front of her leaning against the wardrobes, his feet crossed at the ankles and arms folded over his chest. She can almost see his expectant gaze.

She takes a breath. No guts no glory right?

“I—“ She begins. “I just want—“

He would hum in response to the abandoned answer.

The door bells goes.

Eve takes off the vest.

He’d raise an eyebrow.

“Oh shut up.”

—————

“Why are you even here? I did it didn’t I? I turned back. I kissed her. We—you know. So what else is there?”

“How romantic.” His voice as dry as it ever was. The bastard always thought he was so fucking droll.

Eve rolls her eyes, then reminds herself that there is no one there to see it. This is ridiculous. Her subconscious is ridiculous. If it has something to say, it should just say it.

“So if everything is fine why are you hiding in the bathroom?”

“I’m not hiding. I’m peeing. That’s completely normal.”

“You’ve been in here twenty minutes.”

Eve sighs and buries her face in her hands again.

“She just keeps— looking at me”

As the words come out Eve feels the smallest trace of a release of pressure. Yeah, that’s is probably why she conjures Bill at times like this. No one else has this nack of pulling uncomfortable truths from her.

“Well, you did just shag her so I’m not sure where else she’s meant to look.”

“Urgh. You’re gross.” She replies.

Bill would laugh at that. “What? You’re controlling what I’m saying, if anyone is gross here it’s you.”

Eve exhales. Fine. That is probably right. But no more saying shagged. Just, no.

“No it’s not just looking, it’s looking. Like she wants something. Or wants me to do something or say something. Christ I don’t know.”

He would nod at that.

“Why not just ask her what the looking is about?”

Eve wants to see him. The voice is nice, it’s annoying but it’s also a comfort. What she needs now though is to actually see her friend.

“Because if I ask her, she’s going to say it again.”

—————

“She killed both of us then. That’s nice.” Eve’s voice comes out wistful.

She imagines his hand touching her shoulder, the non shot one, or maybe the top of her hand. Touching some part of her to be reassuring.

“You aren’t dead. You’re just shot and high on pain killers.”

How reassuring.

“What did you think was going to happen?” He would ask, his voice harder than she normally pictures.

“I can’t— not now. Please? Something else. Let’s talk about something else.”

Would he squeeze her hand in acknowledgement? Eve feels more alone than she can ever remember so she pretends that he does.

“What should we talk about then?”

The ceiling tiles above her head have stains on. How could blood get all the way up there?

“Eve?”

“Why is it you? It’s always you that comes when it’s to do with her.” Eve is surprised by the question. She’s thought it before of course but never thought to ask. Well, it’s ask him that or ask him about the blood on the ceiling. What a way to pass the time.

“Why do you think?” He’d ask.

“Can’t you just tell me? Just tell me for once? I was shot, you know.” Her voice is whiny, she doesn’t care.

She has theories; it’s him because she needs to remember the worst thing Villanelle had done to her or maybe it’s because she needs a voice that sounds like Bill to condone her endless pursuit down this rabbit hole. Maybe it’s both.

No response is forthcoming.

The real Bill wouldn’t be play the roll she makes him play. Even if Villanelle hadn’t killed him. All the words she conjures in his voice are hers not his. She’s always been selfish and using his face to justify her own behaviour doesn’t feel like that much of a stretch in terms of selfish things that she does in her never ending pursuit of her.

But— she needs it. Needs him, even if it isn’t real.

So she turns to him again.

“I told her she doesn’t know what love is.” Eve screws her eyes closed tightly. She is not going to cry about that, she isn’t going to cry about anything.

She lets herself feel a reassuring squeeze of her fingers.

He’d sigh sadly then say “I know. Did you mean it?”

“I meant to hurt her.” She answers without hesitation.

“But were you right? Does she know how to love?”

Eve opens her eyes to look at the blood on the ceiling. She feels the pain in her shoulder and looks down at the bandage holding her together. She remembers the feeling of Villanelle’s blood flowing through her fingers in Paris.

“I don’t know.”

—————

“Would it be so bad?” He’d ask

Eve has no response to that.

“Oh come on. Don’t be coy. You say that she’s looking at you, are you looking too?”

“I am always looking at her.” Eve admits it readily, much easier to answer the question at face value.

She can already see the look he’d give her.

“Yes, ok, fine. It would be bad.” Eve buries her head in her hands again.

“Why?” He’d scoff disbelievingly. “She’s looking at you, you’re looking at her. Why would adding love to that be such a bad thing?” He’d ask.

“Because—“ She pauses. “Because it just would.”

“Wow.”

“Shut up. I just can’t let her say it again if I don’t know what to say back.”

“Because she’d try to kill you again.” He’d say it as if it is a clear well established fact. She feel’s the trap but answers anyway

“No.” She says it firmly and surprises herself. “She’s— Its different now. She’s different.”

She pictures Bill’s face full of genuine curiosity.

“I think she really would have let me go tonight. I think if I hadn’t turned around she would have let me leave, and that would have been it.”

“She was going to do that just because you asked her to?” She imagines him asking carefully.

“Yes.”

“So maybe for her, that’s what love looks like.”

What did she expect really?

Did she really think that whatever might happen between the two of them would be normal? A declaration of love over dinner? Showing it through flowers and chocolates or whatever it is people do?

Villanelle isn’t like most people. She doesn’t think like them or act like them, why would Eve expect her to feel or show her emotions in the same way as them, and why would that make her feelings any less valid?

It's a jarring realisation to come to sitting naked on a toilet. Villanelle loves her. She actually loves her. Fuck.

She imagines Bill’s face, smug and too knowing, arms folded across his chest as he casually leans against the counter.

“So, what about you?”

—————

The lights in the ward are dimmed but Eve can see him laying there well enough.

“He’ll be alright.” Bill would tell her, and put a hand on her shoulder perhaps.

“Yeah, the Doctor’s said that with vocal training and another surgery in a year or so he’ll be able to speak again.”

Bill hums behind her.

“You ok?”

“Oh yeah, sure. Just thinking.” She replies vaguely.

“Probably why I’m here.”

Eve gives a small smile.

“Do you still love him?”

“Hmm?” Eve asks, lost in thought.

“Do you still love him?” He’d ask again

“He’s my husband.”

“Plenty of people don’t love their husbands”

Eve huffs out a laugh.

“Everything feels so different now, Im different too. So I don’t know. Yes, I guess?’

“God I can only hope that Keiko still talks about me with that sort of casual indifference.”

Eve rankles a bit at that. 

“Im not indifferent. Its just— Its like everything I felt before seems so quiet now in comparison. As if everything before is dimmer or something. God I sound like a total asshole don’t I? Like i’m having a midlife crisis? We were married for more than a decade for christs sake.”

She can imagine Bill’s relaxed shrug.

“Ok, yes it makes you a bit of an asshole, but if that’s how you feel then— Just embrace thinking stuff that makes you an asshole. It sounds a lot healthier than ignoring it.”

Eve murmurs an acknowledgment.

Niko shifts slightly in the bed and Eve silently begs that he won’t wake. He settles back into sleep and she is flooded by a wash of guilt.

“Hey,” Bill says gently and she imagines another reassuring squeeze of her shoulder.

“Im ok.” She says again, a mantra to convince herself.

“The things he wanted from me were easy before, you know? He wanted affection, someone to talk to, someone to have a drink with, or out to dinner with friends. It was easy to keep one foot on the ground and I knew how to love him like that.”

She watches Niko sleep and burns with the absence of any significant feeling at all.

“But now? I don’t think could give that to anyone.”

“People change.”

“I don’t think that’s it though. I think this is what I've always been and now I can just— be.”

“Because of her?” He asks it guardedly.

“No! Well, yes, but not like that.”

He can already picture his skeptics face, his raised eyebrow.

“Ok, not only like that.”

“Well that’s certainly made things a lot clearer.”

Eve gives him a withering look.

“Its like now I can be however I want to be, I’m going to find her again, I’m going to fight The Twelve and i’m so fucking excited to just do it. It's like I can feel it on my skin and I don’t know how I would ever try to fit back into the life I had with him or anything like it.” She says it all quickly like the words won’t be kept in a second longer, all the urgency and excitement bubbling to the surface.

Bill would nod, “You’re wide awake.”

—————

“Christ its cold in here.” Eve tells him.

“You’re naked in a bathroom at 3am, what did you expect?”

This imaginary version of Bill is as much of a dickhead as the real one. He is rarely sympathetic about Eve’s internal battles, fine, she has to accept that, its sort of what he’s there for. But the least he can do, the very least, is indulge her shivering.

“Oh for goodness sake, put a towel round yourself or something.” He’d say eventually.

Eve pads over to the towel rail and catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror, stopping dead in front of it for a second.

“Jesus christ.” She presses a finger to the side of her breast, prodding at the red mark, and is that the slight indent of teeth? Jesus.

She pictures Bill’s smirk and raised eyebrow.

“What?” She says

“You have a little bite on your tit there.”

“Yes. Thank you. I had realised.”

“Does she have one on hers?” He’d asks with a smile in his voice.

She pictures looking him straight on when she responds.

“No, I left them much lower.”

He’d cringe slightly and she laughs at the thought.

“Oh please. We both know I could never aspire to be anywhere close to as filthy as you.”

She imagines his face struck with rye amusement.

“I would be nice if this was real. I miss you.” She says sadly

There’s no response. She sighs and picks up a towel to wrap herself in before sitting down on the toilet again.

“So?” She asks into the empty room.

“So?”

“So aren’t you meant to trick me into some deeper understanding of myself so I can— grow as a person, or something stupid like that? Or at least talk me into going back in there so I can warm up under the covers.”

“Is that what you want?” He asks.

Eve sighs.

“Bill would never say that.”

Theres no response.

Eve groans.

“Fine! Fine! Fine! What about me? Do I love her? How would I fucking know! It's not what love has always felt like before so I guess not.”

She huffs out another sigh.

“Go on then, ask your stupid probing questions.”

There is no response.

“You’re a dick.”

Nothing.

“Please?”

Theres no reply and Eve’s heart sinks. Its not really him, she knows that, but the silence hurts all the same.

She considers going back to bed. She’s been gone so long now Villanelle will either be asleep and none the wiser to all this hang wringing, or she’ll be sitting waiting to have a conversation. Knowing how her life normally goes, it's bound to be the conversation.

She meant what she said earlier, she doesn’t think that Villanelle would hurt her. Not like before. The real problem is that Eve doesn’t want to hurt Villanelle. Not again, and not this new fragile version in particular. If she goes out there and lays down next to her now only for Villanelle to say it again, the words from Rome, she doesn’t know what she can say to avoid it.

Is this love?

She can’t breathe without thinking of her, its the same speech as she delivered in Paris, but now with more questions not less despite knowing her far more deeply now. She always wants more but that’s obsession not love.

The attraction? Jesus Christ. If Eve thought that one night with her would get it out of her system she is a big enough person to be able to admit how stupid that was. She aches in muscles she hasn’t used in years and, but for the fear of confronting whatever emotional fall out there would be, she would happily walk back into the bedroom to wake her and have her again and again and again. So yeah, there’s a not insubstantial sexual side to her feelings.

Does she care about Villanelle? She’s been sitting in this bathroom for the last half an hour trying to find a way to tread carefully enough to prevent any more hurt between them. All that care and thoughtfulness exists despite Eve being furious with her for Rome, for Bill for leaving a gone off banana in her salt pot and for a thousand other things.

“See you’re doing it all by yourself now.” His voice again.

“So I’m obsessed with her, I want her, I care about hurting her feelings and sometimes I hate her so much I want to be the one who eventually kills her. Does that answer your question?” Her voice as impatient as she feels.

“Maybe that’s what your version of love looks like now.”

She says nothing for a minute or two. It’s not an entirely new thought for her.

“It’s not what I had with Niko.”

She hears warmth in his imagined laughter.

“Good.”

“Obsession and sex edged with caring. Not exactly what dreams are made of is it?”

“Who’s dreams are we talking about? This is the woman you stabbed and she only seemed to get more interested.”

Eve allows herself a weak smile.

“I told you, she’s different now. What if—“

Eve scrubs her hands over her face for what feels like the thousandth time since coming into the bathroom tonight.

“What if— whatever you want to call these feelings isn’t enough?”

She hates the sentence as soon as it leaves her mouth.

She imagines his sigh, sympathetic for once.

“Then it won’t be enough. But it's not really a reason to spend the rest of your life hiding in the loo is it?”

She snorts.

The light in the bedroom is switched on and Eve watches the light bleed under the door with less dread than she would have imagined when she first came in here. She dithers slightly over whether to walk out in a towel or just to front it out and return to the bed naked, unable to decide which would be more mortifying.

Naked would say confidence. Naked is naked but at least it’s confident. Crawling into bed with her wrapped in a towel would be so awkward she cringed at the thought.

Towel discarded on the floor, she puts the hand on the door and stops.

“Come on, no guts no glory.” The Bill in her head says.

She exhales roughly. Maybe it is love, or maybe this is just the best version that she knows how to give now. But really does it matter? Villanelle’s love looks skewed to a normal person, so if Eve’s does too, would that really be so bad? Would that make Villanelle find it lacking in some way? She can’t imagine that it would.

She hears the kettle boiling in the bedroom and a slight clatter of a cup and saucer. It makes her smile despite her nerves.

A few minutes pass with her listening behind the door and Eve takes a deep breath. She wants to feel Bill behind her but she is standing alone.

The light flicks off and it’s what she’s been waiting for. It’s taken enough courage to decide to go out and face her as it is, let alone adding the prospect of walking back into a brightly lit room completely naked.

She takes another steadying breath and opens the door.

—————

The room is dark but she can make out the vague shape of her body on the bed as she approaches. She sits gently on the edge and looks at the cup on the side of the bedside table. Villanelle had made her a tea and it makes something in her chest clench.

She slips under the covers and finds herself being rearranged to allow long arms and legs to tangle themselves around her.

No one speaks for a while and Eve feels an impulse to laugh.

“You’re finished with your mini bathroom crisis? Yes?” Her voice is deeper than usual, roughened by sleep Eve assumes.

“It wasn’t a crisis.”

Eve feels a small exhalation of breath on her shoulder and can feel Villanelle’s amusement.

“Ok, so you were peeing for half and hour then?”

Eve is silent in response but feels arms tighten around her and a kiss pressed to her shoulder.

“You were talking to yourself.”

Eve freezes. Was she?

“I didn’t—“ Villanelle let’s the sentence drop before trying again.

“I didn’t listen. But if you are upset or nervous— you can, you can talk to me. Sometimes. If you want. Only if you want to.”

Eve wraps her fingers around the arm slung over her waist.

“Ok.”

In some ways Villanelle’s love is easily recognisable. It shouldn’t be a big surprise, she’s never only one thing or the other. Eve picks up the hand resting on her stomach and lifts it to her lips. She hopes the kiss will be interpreted as she intends; a simple gesture of reciprocated imperfect love.

There’s a murmur in her ear and Eve feels Villanelle’s body gradually relax into sleep behind her.

There’s silence for a moment.

“You ok there?” He’d ask.

“Yeah, I’m actually fine.”

There’s silence. There is no Bill. It’s just Eve laying wrapped up in a sleeping Villanelle.

She’s made her choice, and yeah, she thinks, she is going to be fine.

—————

**Author's Note:**

> Third person then? Weird, right?
> 
> I wanted to try but it turns out it’s hard. Like writing with the wrong hand or something. 
> 
> I still find that writing she/eve repetitively feels annoying but ‘I’ doesn’t bother me in the same way. Also weird is that I only find it annoying when writing, if I’m reading 3pov I don’t bat an eyelid.
> 
> To sum up, my brain is weird. Do write and tell me if you agree.


End file.
